- Cab Calloway was born on Christmas day (December 25, 1907) in Rochester, New York!
- He grew up in Baltimore, Maryland. It was in Baltimore when he first started singing. It was also during this time when his lifelong love of horse-racing was born.
- After he moved from Baltimore to Illinois, He studied law at Crane University (now Malcolm X College) but music was always his passion. Lucky for us!
- During the time he performed at Chicago’s Sunset Club, Calloway met legendary Louis Armstrong, who tutored him in the art of scat singing. WHAT A MENTOR.
- Cab Calloway was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame in 1987.
- His famous “Minnie the Moocher” (1931) was the first jazz album to sell a million copies.
- The famous call-and-response “hi-de-hi-de-ho” chorus in Minnie the Moocher was actually improvised by Cab when he couldn’t recall a lyric! It became his signature phrase for the rest of his career.
- Other hits included “Moon Glow” (1934), “The Jumpin’ Jive” (1939) and “Blues in the Night” (1941).
- During the 1930s and 1940s, he appeared in films The Big Broadcast (1932), The Singing Kid (1936) and Stormy Weather (1943).
- Cab was strongly associated with the famed Cotton Club in Harlem, New York City, where he was a regular performer as the bandleader of Cab Calloway and his Orchestra.
- Calloway became an author and shared his wonderful life story in an autobiography titled Of Minnie the Moocher and Me (1976).
- He was the inspiration for the character of Oogie Boogie in Tim Burton’s wildly popular movie The Nightmare Before Christmas.
- In 1993, President Bill Clinton presented Calloway with a National Medal of the Arts.
- Cab Calloway married Zulme “Nuffie” Calloway in the mid 1950s and together they resided in Greenburgh, New York.
- The couple had one daughter, Chris Calloway, who later performed with her father and became a highly regarded jazz singer and dancer in her own right.
- Cab Calloway died on November 18, 1994 in Hockessin, Delaware, following a stroke earlier in the year. He was 86 years old.